Giant offers lessons by day, scares by night

Friday through Aug. 12. Fallen Giant is open from noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays only; Internal Nightmare is open from 6 to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays.

Cost:

$5 for Fallen Giant; $7 for Internal Nightmare

Info:

Visit fallengiant.com
Sarah Roberts

ravel anywhere near CherryVale Mall this weekend, and you’ll be hard-pressed to miss a giant kicking back outside.

Starting Friday, a 7,000-square-foot inflatable, reclining giant will take up residence in the mall’s northwest parking lot for 10 days.

The giant is actually a maze that serves double duty: By day it’s the "Fallen Giant," offering youngsters a brief human anatomy lesson during a safari-esque trek. At night it transforms into the "Internal Nightmare," a haunted house that puts the more daring in the midst of the human body.

Billed as the largest inflatable attraction in the country, the giant is making its first stop in the Rockford area. Its owners, Peter Koklamanis and Anthony Relken, whose primary business is running haunted attractions in the Chicago area, purchased the giant in 2004 and opened it to the public that year in Racine, Wis.

The pair, which does business as GPT Enterprises, looks for cities that have a healthy appetite for scream-filled fun when deciding where to set up their creature.

"We see what’s on local Web sites and check for haunted houses, hay rides and things like that," Koklamanis said. "It seems like Rockford has a great zeal for those types of attractions."

GPT workers are scheduled to arrive in Rockford Wednesday to begin setting up the giant. It takes a crew of about seven people working 10-hour shifts two days to secure and inflate the giant. The company uses its staff as characters in the day and night versions of the maze, as well as using volunteers who typically are involved in local fright productions.

Three to four volunteers work the maze by day, taking children ages 5 to 10 through, handing out educational tidbits about human anatomy and fostering a sense of exploration.

At night, the staff turns on smoke machines, breaks out air cannons and cranks up the sound effects to mirror the sounds of the human body — such as those in digestion and the heartbeat — to create the feeling of being trapped inside a body.

"In most haunted houses, you go from scene to scene," Koklamanis said. "In this one, you go from organ to organ."